


Euryale and Medusa

by ADeedWithoutaName



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Creature!Sam, First Time, Gorgon!Sam, M/M, Wincest - Freeform, bottom!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 08:16:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17301089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADeedWithoutaName/pseuds/ADeedWithoutaName
Summary: Together, Sam and Dean have always been able to handle everything that came their way, eventually. They're all they have. Solving this particular problem, though, proves more difficult than most, since Dean can't even look at Sam, and has no idea how to bridge the distance between them.





	Euryale and Medusa

The dark fabric Sam's winding around Dean's eyes smells like him. Sam, that is. Cologne, shampoo, old books (god knows he spends all his damn time in the library), something pine-y. Sam probably ripped up one of his old T-shirts to make Dean's blindfold. It's soft, at least.

There're spells out there that'd knock Dean's eyesight out temporarily. Sam mentioned them, so he's probably got them all stored away in some neat little nerd file, clearly labeled. They can't know  _exactly_ when those spells'd wear off, though. And these several layers of cloth, he can rip right off his face if there's an emergency. Almost goes without saying the blindfold's safer.

"I know this sucks," Sam starts, after clearing his throat. They're in Dean's room, Dean in his desk chair, Sam standing behind him. "But it's just 'til we figure out how to get me back to normal. Right now, though...don't think it's safe for you to be able to see unless you're not in the bunker or there's a locked door between us."

There's a pause. Dean wonders if maybe Sam wants him to say something, but Sam's already talking again by the time he figures that out.

"Otherwise, you." Sam swallows. "Might see me."

Dean grins, tries to make a joke. It's as automatic as thumbing the safety off a gun. "Should've thought of this ages ago. Would've really appreciated not having to look at your ugly mug every five minutes my whole life."

There's no smile in Sam's voice when he answers, and Dean knows he fucked up. "You probably wouldn't wanna look at me right now even if you could do it without, y'know. Dying."

Dean's silent, remembering how Sam looked the last time he saw him. When staring him straight in the face had made Dean feel dizzy and weak, head swimming and fingers and toes painful-numb like he'd shoved them into snow, and not just because Sam looked like a plague victim. That hair he was so prissy about falling off him in big, shiny handfuls, swollen lumps showing through on his scalp. Teeth dropping out of raw, swollen gums as Sam panicked. Even with the hunt they'd just been on, even though they hadn't so much as driven past a nuclear power plant in months and Dean wasn't sick, his very first thought was radiation poisoning.

Then he saw Sam's eyes. They were a flat grayish-green in the bunker's lighting, but the pupils were splinters in the centers of the color, slits so thin Dean might've drawn them with the point of his sharpest knife. He knew then.

It's been half a day since Dean actually laid eyes on him, eight or so hours of research and horror, so Sam's probably worse by now.

"Sorry," Dean says quietly. Sam just finishes up with the blindfold, knotting it tight at the back of his head.

After that, Sam stands behind Dean for a second, and Dean can  _feel_  how awkwardly he's holding himself. Like he's embarrassed at how much space he takes up. Dean's not sure when he last stood like that. Late teens, maybe? After the growth spurt that finally took him up over six feet?

"You know it's not your fault, right?" Sam asks, finally breaking the silence.

"I know that."

"Nobody knew this could happen. There wasn't anything in any of the lore we read."

"I  _know_." They knew about the turn-you-to-stone-with-one-look thing, obviously, and they knew how to handle that after they'd killed a basilisk back in 2014. They knew about having to cut the head off, just like a vamp. They didn't know about having to be careful of the snakes. When one bit Sam, neither of them'd been all that worried. If Dean'd known, he would've sucked the poison out of Sam's hand then and there, to hell with the jokes Sam'd be able to make about it for the rest of their lives. Maybe that wouldn't've even done any good, though. "Wasn't anybody's fault."

There's a pause Dean doesn't like the feel of, then Sam says, "Y'know, you  _say_ that, but I get the feeling you wouldn't've let me talk you into something like this - " He tugs on the blindfold. "If you weren't blaming yourself."

"Look, let's just focus on turning this thing around before you've got a full, thick head of rattlesnakes," Dean replies irritably, skin crawling at the thought. His eyes are automatically widening behind the blindfold to the point it hurts, trying instinctively to see in the dark. His lashes brush against fabric he feels like is almost touching his eyeballs and it reminds him, hazily, of elementary-school birthday parties, ones he only got invited to 'cause the kid's parents made them ask the whole class. Piñatas and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. The cake was always shitty and the other kids were always weirded out by how vicious Dean was with a bat.

He stands up, throws his hands out dramatically in Sam's general direction. "Now take me to the library and load me up with whatever books you want me to read." Might as well get a jump start.

Sam ignores Dean's hands and takes him by the shoulder instead, which is probably better for guiding him around the bunker. He's warm. For now. Are gorgons cold-blooded?

Dean guesses he might find the answer to that in one of the books as Sam walks him out of his room.

* * *

After a few days wearing the blindfold whenever he isn't locked in his room or out on a food run, Dean's sort of gotten used to it. He's got a mental map of the bunker, or at least parts of it, painted in silvery shades of blue on the backs of his lids (because he figured out quick it's easier to have his eyes closed with this thing on). He's stopped banging his shins, hips, and skull into everything, and learned to kind of sweep his feet in front of him some when he's walking, just in case anything's moved. Good to know he'll be A-okay if he ever actually goes blind.

Dean did have to have Sam help him around at first, just to be sure he didn't fall down the stairs or brain himself on the edge of an open cabinet. He called him "Sparky" and joked he ought to put a guide dog harness on him, which he didn't get the feeling Sam found all that amusing, so fuck Dean for trying to have some fun with this whole shitty situation, right? A harness would've been awesome and Sam knows it.

He wishes Sam had a bell on him now, though. Dean never knows where he is and is pretty sure he's avoiding him, outside of exchanging info from research. Dean hopes it isn't because of the whole Sparky thing, but more or less knows it isn't. Doesn't Sam know Dean's perfectly safe with the blindfold on? It was his idea.

Whatever. Dean knows Sam's in the bunker and beyond that, it isn't his job to track him down. He's just taking a break from looking through pages and pages of gorgon stuff on his laptop, most of which they already knew, to get something to eat. He's tolerated takeout and Sam's terrible college-student cooking for long enough. Sam's the one who's into all that healthy mumbo-jumbo, so Dean can't figure out why he thinks ramen and hot dogs is a good meal.

"Dean! What the hell're you doing?" Sam comes into the kitchen while Dean's making himself a sandwich. He might be dumb, but not dumb enough to use the stove right now. "You're gonna hurt yourself."

Dean snorts. "Please. I could handle a knife twice this size with my eyes..." He trails off as he remembers the fabric resting on his eyelids. "Well. Y'know." He goes back to spreading mayonnaise on sourdough.

"Here. Just. Lemme do it." Sam nudges Dean out of the way and Dean goes, even though he's rolling his closed eyes the whole time.

Maybe part of the reason Dean gives in to Sam's control-freak shtick is because it does something to him, the contact. Having Sam's body from knee to shoulder pressed right against his for half a second. That and the familiar way Sam smells triggers a shockingly-visceral response in Dean. It's like when you idly scratch your scalp and suddenly realize it's been itching for hours, a need Dean didn't even know he had.

Dean just stands there by the counter while Sam finishes, tense, confused, and trying to think about something else. It's super late, but that's when he realizes Sam's talking funny, kinda like there's something up with his mouth. Which of course there is. Must be his teeth.

The gorgon they killed had a mouthful of hooked fangs and one real big pair, tethered by webbing, that folded up and popped out when it closed and opened its mouth. Just like (Dean grimaces) a snake. He wonders if Sam'll get those. If the human teeth he lost'll grow back if - when,  _when_  they fix him. If not, at least the dentures will give Dean a whole new set of ammunition for affectionate brotherly teasing.

Sam breaks Dean out of his thoughts by sliding the plate across the counter. "Here."

"Thanks." When Dean picks the sandwich up, he can tell it isn't made quite the way he would've done it, but that's okay. Before taking a bite, not even thinking about it, Dean just casually says, "Weird not bein' able to see you."

And it is. But it shouldn't be. Dean definitely shouldn't've brought it up, and like so many things in his life, he wishes he could take it back. He bites into the sandwich and it's good.

"Why?" Sam's confused. "I'm right here."

"I know." Dean swallows, then makes it worse. "Just feels weird anyway."

Neither one of them says anything for a while. Dean puts the sandwich back on the plate, panning to head to his room with it, but Sam grabs his hand then. Just reaches out and does it, then holds it like he's got no real idea what he's doing. Dean doesn't, either.

"This...this better?" Sam asks, all tentative and unsure.

Dean's too surprised to answer right away. Sam's hand's still warm, and covered in calluses rather than scales. Not that gorgons have scales anywhere but on their snakes, Dean's pretty sure. There's a smear of mayonnaise or maybe mustard on one of Sam's knuckles, and Dean can feel that scar on his palm, made rough and ugly by the two of them messing with it so much while it was healing.

"Yeah," Dean says finally, and squeezes Sam's hand.

* * *

A week after Sam got a dose of gorgon venom, it's been over twenty-four hours since Dean really interacted with him (shut up, he's not counting) and he's going a little nuts.

It's totally stupid. He should be able to just shrug it off; hell, he shouldn't even be dealing with it in the first place. But he is.

Something's happening to him, in the weird half-isolation of the temporary blindness he agreed to. He's got a desperate need to see Sam. Sam's pretty much the one and only loadbearing pillar left in the ramshackle, rundown mess that's Dean's life (there's Castiel, but...god only knows where he is), and not being able to see him's worse than the blindness itself. Dean needs to  _know_ he's here, that he didn't just finally go off the deep end the last time he lost his brother, that he hasn't been talking to an empty passenger seat this whole time. That's been a real fear of his for years, one he's never telling anybody about.

It feels like when Sam was at Stanford. It feels like when he's dead.

So even though this is tough on both of them and Sam probably just needs his space, Dean walks his blindfolded ass down to Sam's room and knocks on the door.

"Dean, now's...now's a really bad time," Sam calls, voice strained.

Dean almost makes a crack about how Sam sounds just like he did when he was thirteen. This isn't a shitty motel bathroom with a broken lock on the door, though, and he sincerely doubts Sam's whacking off in there. Even if he is, not like Dean's gonna be able to see anything. So he opens the door. It's unlocked.

He hears a soft hissing right away. Like a gas leak, but not quite. It makes the short hairs on the back of Dean's neck stand straight up and some dumb, primal part of his brain, one he probably inherited from a caveman who survived 'cause he didn't fuck around with sounds like that, cringe away. Dean doesn't cut and run, though, because he smells something, too, one of the scents he's most intimately familiar with: blood.

That wakes up a totally different section of his brain. He's been honing this one since he was four years old. "What's the matter? Where're you hurt?"

He crosses the room, somehow managing to avoid hitting anything. He hears Sam scramble off the bed.

"I'm fine, trust me. They just..." There's a defeated sigh. "My. Snakes came in last night."

That explains the hissing. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Fine."

That would've been enough to end the conversation on a hundred other occasions. But something, maybe the blindfold, makes Dean bolder than those other times he should've pushed and backed down instead. The demon blood. Hallucifer. The Book of the Damned. He comes deeper into Sam's bedroom, tries to get rid of the space between them.

It's not easy. Dean hasn't actually been in here since he started wearing the blindfold, so he's got no idea where anything is. He's grateful for the steel toes of his boots when he smashes them on Sam's desk and swears like a sailor when he barks his shins on the bed. It's a small space, though, and the picture comes fast, a quick brush slicing colorless strokes in the darkness.

Sam's slippery. He can be quiet when he wants to, even at that size, but Dean's good at hearing him. Especially 'cause of those snakes. They're hissing the whole time and they get way louder when Dean gets close.

Maybe it'd've been better to leave after the first five minutes. Definitely smarter. But Dean can't. Part of it's because Dean doesn't believe Sam's okay and needs to check for himself, since his little brother definitely has a history of lying to him about the state he's in. Part of it's a sudden, illogical need to lay hands on Sam if he can't see him. Fill the tender void left by sight with at least one other sense.

It's super gay, Dean's aware. Not like it's his choice.

And however dumb he's being, he's not in it alone, because Sam never once leaves the room through the still-very-open door.

Dean catches him finally, making a swipe of blind faith and finding Sam's wrists in his hands. Sam struggles, and they both know he could break Dean's hold on him if he wanted, but he doesn't.

Dean hates snakes in the same irrational, wry way he hates airplanes and Sam hates clowns. They make his skin crawl and his mouth dry out. He hates all the snake monsters, basilisks, nagas, and now gorgons. He hates the way they smell, the way they sound, the way they never blink. But he reaches for Sam's head with one hand.

Sam panics. "No, don't, Dean, you can't, they're gonna bite - "

They don't bite him, though. Threadlike tongues flicker against his forehead and cheeks when he leans in, and Dean's breath stutters some in a tightening throat, but there's never any teeth. Just blunt noses bumping and nuzzling against his face, feeling out his blindfold, his hair, even his lips. They're smooth and so  _warm_. Just like Sam.

They coil around Dean's hand and fingers as he touches them, and their supple strength reminds Dean of his baby's polished-smooth leather. Some are thinner than a pencil, others about the same width as a machete's grip, and most are about as long as Sam's hair was before he started losing it.

They're definitely friendly, and they really seem to like Dean. The hissing quiets when he puts his other hand in the middle of them, and he can almost forget it's snakes he's touching.

"See?" Dean asks quietly. "It's okay, Sammy."

Sam says nothing. He doesn't move, either.

Dean feels out the snakes. Sam's got at least three dozen new friends up here; Dean gives up on counting after that. Their heads are shaped more like bullets than diamonds, blending seamlessly into their necks, so definitely not rattlesnakes. Dean feels dried blood and scraps of skin on their leather-satin scales, and that knots his stomach up. But there's no break between them and Sam's head when he gets down to their bases. No wounds.

Dean keeps on building his image of what Sam looks like now. His scalp is covered in scales, and they sweep down onto his neck and along the sides of his face, framing his cheekbones like his sideburns used to. Or maybe they're more like feathers. They prickle up when Dean's fingertips run over them, pointed on the ends.

"What color're they?" Dean's voice sounds way too loud to him. And too rough.

"I don't know," Sam mumbles back. "Same as my hair was?"

Gorgon Sam was a pencil sketch inside Dean's head. Now he's a painting. Skin tan, moles brown, snakes and scales a glossy coffee-black glittering with highlights of honey and amber and brown. Only his eyes, slit-pupiled, are still colorless, 'cause Dean's got no idea what they'd look like right now and it ain't like Sam can tell him.

Sam's always been pretty. But in Dean's head right now, he's beautiful. A real heartbreaker. If you ignore the snakes, of course. Sam and Dean are too close, breathing each other's air, noses a hair away from touching, Dean's hands buried in Sam's snakes and those snakes rubbing themselves all over him. And Dean's having a chick-flick moment all on his lonesome, even though he's the one who made the rule, except it's way worse than a normal one, 'cause he's feeling tight and hot and jittery, and having thoughts he's kept outta his mind since he was a teenager and so hopelessly horny nothing was off-limits, and he's just not sure he can -

Dean lets go, steps back. His whole head's full of the smell of Sam. Those few minutes weren't enough, not close, but he's already decided to leave. He's afraid of what he's feeling and doesn't wanna do anything the two of them'll definitely regret.

Dean does not feel like himself. He moved too quick, and it was jerky when he put this new distance between him and Sam. He doesn't get how that looks to Sam until Sam speaks up.

"I don't blame you for being scared." He sounds so bleak, so damn  _resigned_.

Dean wants to explain he's got it all wrong. He's never been afraid of Sam. Nothing could ever make him afraid of Sam. Not psychic powers, not Lucifer, and definitely not a head full of snakes. Saying the right thing at the right time's never been one of Dean's strong points, though, and if the blindfold helped him stay and push earlier, it's leaving him in the lurch now.

"You oughta shower," Dean says brusquely. "Get that blood off 'em."

Then he gets the hell out, walking stiff and awkward in jeans he could swear are two sizes too small all of a sudden, and he's trying hard as he can not to let images of Sam in the shower explode into this blackness he lives in most of the time. Of skin-on-skin contact. Of naked intimacy.

The snakes start hissing again as Dean leaves, a soft and endless sound.

* * *

Dean's doing research, which is boring as hell no matter what it's on or how urgent it is. Give him a gun, a knife, a snarling face to punch in, he's golden, but just sitting still feels fucking useless and makes him itch along his bones.

Research is the only thing he does these days. He hasn't punched anything (living) in three weeks.

This research, though, is special, Dean guesses. Because he's doing it with Sam. He's got a book cracked open on his lap, an ancient monster of a mythology collection, and he assumes Sam's doing the same. Dean's bedroom door is between them and they've got their backs up against it. Dean knows the warmth he feels seeping through the thick wood is just his imagination.

Dean's just read the story of Medusa, in full, for the very first time, and he's appalled. Sam's trying to explain.

"No, see, it wasn't a punishment for being raped," Sam says. He's got that special tone in his voice, the one that always pops up whenever he gets to explain something he knows a lot about. Dean wonders all the time why in the hell he wanted to be a lawyer when he was so clearly born for teaching. "Athena's the goddess of wisdom, she knows better than to blame the victim. She couldn't protect Medusa from Poseidon in her temple, and she couldn't punish  _him_ , so she made it so she couldn't ever be attacked by a man again."

"You're sure that's how the Greeks saw it?" Dean's got his blindfold hanging around his neck. It doesn't smell like Sam anymore. "I mean, this jackass says what happened to her is 'just' and 'well-earned.'" He pulls out his snootiest voice for those two words.

"It's how a lot of them saw it," Sam replies gently. "It was a...a gift, Dean. An apology. Athena gave Medusa the means to defend herself, and live on her own. She made her strong."

"That didn't matter when Perseus showed up though, did it?" Dean's not sure why he's so freaking angry about this. Sam doesn't say anything for a while.

"I guess not."

"Y'know, where were her sisters when all this happened?" Dean flips back to the very beginning of the story, to a couple names he's got no hope of saying out loud. "When Poseidon came after her, when Perseus killed her? I mean, they were immortal, right?" Dean stares down at the black-and-white drawing of Medusa on one page, furious and sin-ugly, head vividly severed and held aloft by its writhing snakes. "They could've helped."

"Euryale and Stheno?" Dean assumes Sam's easy pronunciation is perfect.  _Yur-ai-uh-lee_  and  _Ss-thee-no_. "I don't know."

"Well, I'm not gonna let anything happen to you, even if we don't figure this out. Which we're gonna," Dean tacks on fiercely. "I'm not gonna be like Athena or Euro-whatever."

"If anybody's Euryale, it's me," Sam says quietly.

"Uh, no, you're Medusa." Dean tries to lighten the mood. "Unless your worst hair day ever somehow got better when I wasn't lookin'?"

"No." Sam's still talking funny, maybe funnier than he was back at the beginning. "Euryale was a gorgon, too. After all the times I've let you down?" Dean feels more than hears him swallow. "You're Medusa, Dean. I'm Euryale."

Dean's hands fold into fists, the movement more familiar to him than breathing. He's careful not to crumple the pages of the book in his lap. Sam doesn't eat in Dean's baby anymore (not that he's been in her in weeks), Dean doesn't fuck with his books.

"Stop, okay?" Dean pushes off the door, turns to glare at it and talk directly to it. It's not as good as being face-to-face with Sam. It never will be. "Just cut it out, Sam. Don't talk like that. Thought the Trials got this outta your system."

There's more Dean wants to say, so much more, enough to fill up all the books in Sam's library and archives and spill out into the rest of the bunker, but he can't say any of it. He doesn't trust himself to talk 'cause he's starting to feel like he did that day in Sam's room, touching him. At least there's a door between them now, locked 'cause Sam says he doesn't trust himself not to forget and just casually stroll on in. Dean keeps on glaring at the door. Sam's silent, but his snakes aren't; they hiss, loud, and it reminds Dean of the sound retreating waves make as they bubble backwards through the sand. There's a tiny ocean connecting him and Sam, lapping back and forth under Dean's door.

"See?" Dean says about the snakes. "They agree with me."

Sam clears his throat, changes the subject. And that's normal for him, for both of them, that's good and safe. But Dean's not really listening to his brother as he leans back against the door again, as Sam goes on and on about how Medusa might be the gorgon Alpha or something.

Dean's staring down at the book in his lap, so damn big and packed absolutely chock-full of information that does diddly-squat for him. At the myth of Medusa.

At that same old story of pain and loneliness and loss, repeating over and over again for thousands of years, the plot points never changing, the ending never coming out any different.

* * *

Dean's got no idea how long it's been since Sam got bit. He doesn't look at calendars anymore, doesn't even notice the date on his laptop screen when he boots it up to trawl the same dozen webpages over and over, like maybe he missed something the first thousand times around. All he knows is the gorgon hunt happened in late summer and it's definitely fall now, hurtling towards winter. The air bites at his face when he goes out for supplies, the area around his eyes, the skin there sensitive after so much time shielded from the world.

Sam probably knows how long it's been. Down to the minute. Dean doesn't wanna ask him.

It's okay Dean's sense of time's decayed into a soft mess, that Halloween and Thanksgiving have probably slid by without him even noticing, because him and Sam? They've got a new normal. One they don't talk about, one that involves a whole lotta touching, more touching than there's been since they were kids. It's propping Dean up and he hopes Sam needs it too, and he's managed to keep his feelings on a leash so far, and it'll keep on being good and easy so long as they  _just don't talk about it_.

They're in Sam's room, on his bed. Dean moved his stereo in here and Zep's playing loud as Sam and his little buddies can stand it. "When the Levee Breaks." Dean's loved music long as he can remember, had a special relationship with it, figured he heard it different than anyone else. Blindfolded, though...it's something else. Songs are castles and albums are vast, exotic cities, and Dean can lose whole days wandering through their streets. The colors are so vivid they hurt the eyes inside his head. It's almost like being stoned, but without the dullness pot brings, because only Dean's eyes are wrapped in cotton. None of his other senses.

Dean and Sam have their legs folded on Sam's crappy mattress (memory foam has ruined Dean). Their knees are touching, their foreheads. Their hands are tangled in each other's laps and Sam's snakes slither around Dean's skull in a shared halo. He doesn't understand how he was ever afraid of snakes. It feels like something he dreamed, something that didn't make sense when he woke up.

This is Dean's favorite place in the whole world to be. But he can't stop thinking about his room. It's full of pencil sketches that just won't turn out right, notebook pages he ripped and crumpled out of frustration, every picture of Sam he has scattered all over the place. The most recent one's almost two years old. Why in the hell don't they ever take pictures?

"I think," Dean begins softly. It's the first thing either of them's said in what feels like hours. "I'm forgetting what you look like."

There's a sad smile in Sam's voice when he says, "I don't really look the same anymore."

"I don't care." Dean's all anger and good, old-fashioned bullheadedness. "I wish I could see you."

"You know you can't do that," Sam says, and Dean does know, so the two of them let the silence cocoon them again for a long time. Until Sam speaks up again.

"Y'know, I kinda like it."

"What the hell're you talkin' about?" The snakes are hissing soft in Dean's ears, tongues flickering in and out of his canals, so he assumes he heard Sam wrong.

_"This."_  Sam's hands leave Dean's and it's unmistakable when he brushes them over his snakes, his head, his face. Dean already knows where this is going and he hates it, hates it, hates it. "My whole life, I've felt like a...a freak. A monster. I've told you that."

Dean's hands clench in Sam's lap. The snakes have fallen silent.

"Now I look it. It feels right." Sam's so casual he might as well be discussing how much kale he eats, or how many miles he can run. "Always figured I'd be a demon, though. Not a gorgon."

"No." Dean forces it out past gritted teeth. He's knotted so tight it's a wonder he can say anything at all. "No, you're not a monster, you're not a freak." Sam starts  _laughing_ , the bitch, so Dean cuts him off harsh as he can. "You never have been."

"Then what am I, Dean?"

"You're Sam." Dean's never understood this pathological need Sam seems to have, to hurt himself with how bad he thinks he is, to make himself out to be so much worse than, less than, the man he's actually become. "You're my brother."

The feelings are here again, and it's bad, 'cause they're talking like they're not supposed to. Dean never has a chance. Not even saying out loud Sam's his brother can save him now.

He crosses a line he's always held himself back from. He kisses Sam.

Dean didn't expect to do that. He doesn't think Sam expected it, either. He wants to pull back, apologize until his filthy lips fall off. He wants to forget this ever happened. What he probably wants most is to run away, like he did last time, because he thinks he's pretty good at that. Not as good as Sam.

Neither of them runs away, though. As "Levee" segues into "Stairway to Heaven," Sam opens his mouth up before Dean can bolt, and for a crazy, stupid second, Dean thinks he's maybe gonna unhinge his jaw. Of course he doesn't. Sam just draws him in, folds the two of them together, and Dean finds out why he's been talking so weird.

Sam's got fangs now. In the front of his mouth, at least. The back's not normal human molars, but the front's all needle-thin hooks and razor-sharp points, every one aimed at Sam's throat. There're two real big ones where his canines used to be, mostly sheathed in smooth flesh except for the pearly tips. Seems like they fold neatly into the hollows on the roof of Sam's mouth. Right now, they're trying to spring out, a gentle pressure against the flat of Dean's tongue like a trap he hasn't quite sprung, a trigger he hasn't quite pulled.

Speaking of tongues, that's different, too. Not that Dean's ever had Sam's tongue in his mouth before, but he really doubts it was so smooth, so thin, so sharp-forked at the end back when...back when...

He doesn't wanna think  _back when he was human._  Doesn't wanna give Sam the satisfaction, even inside Dean's own head, of admitting he's something else now.

The snakes wind through Dean's hair. They nuzzle his temples and trace the stubble-painted line of his jaw. They aren't hissing at all, but they move fast. They're excited.

There's no talking when Sam and Dean break apart in order to pant hot against each other's faces. They know what to do. They help each other fast and rough out of their clothes, callused hands sweeping over the scars and freckles of moles of bare skin. Sam's lube, bottle practically brand-fucking-new, comes out of the bottom drawer of his dresser. The top's covered in spiders, flies, mice, moths, all the small things Sam's found around himself, smooth and hard and cool. Dean'd like some, like to fill every surface in his room with them and see what they look like, 'cause they feel almost like volcanic glass to him. Like the blades he brought back from Purgatory. But Sam won't give him any.

They kiss again when Dean returns naked to the bed. The snakes kiss him too, with tickling tongues. Sam's saliva is sweet and sharp. Maybe there's venom in it.

The only clothing left on either of them is the blindfold on Dean. Sam's already half-hard and Dean coaxes him the rest of the way by feel alone, slicking his generous length with a whole handful of lube. He gets an answer to a question he found on the internet: Sam's pubes aren't snakes, which is a relief since Dean doesn't have to worry about crushing them. Sam does, though, have thin swaths of scales on his chest and stomach and in the small of his back, and lining his collarbone, which Dean finds because he can't not touch him all over. They react to the press of Dean's hands the same way the ones on his head did.

Dean's played around, switched it up. He doesn't know if Sam has and doesn't feel like asking. He doesn't need much prep so he works himself open with leftover lube, Sam's precome, and three fingers as Sam lays back on the bed with a low groan. That noise sets something shivering in Dean's stomach and loosens him instantly.

What does Sam do with his head? He can't lay down normally, not with the snakes. But Dean's too horny and touch-starved to care right now, and he doesn't even want to feel out the shape of Sam's position when he could be climbing on top of him.

Dean grabs Sam's hands. Their fingers lock together, their palms grit against each other. Sam steadies him as Dean feels out his tip with his wet, twitching hole, an X-rated version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, and he gasps with a raw pleasure when Dean finds it.

Dean takes him. He takes every inch of length and girth, every vein and flare. He takes his little brother all the way to the root and his tight ring forces an avalanche of lube onto Sam's balls. Sam's head hits his prostate hard on the way in and Dean sees stars behind his blindfold, and then it's snug against Sam's shaft, hot pleasure coursing steady through his stomach.

It's hard. It's been a long time since Dean had a cock up his ass, and even longer since he had one this big, and he feels like he might split right open. In a good way. Dean's groaning and gasping, shaking and sweating, his mind wrapped like putty around Sam's monster dick (pun a hundred percent not intended), but he gets it together in only a couple seconds. It's the desperate little whines slipping out of Sam and the throaty hissing of his snakes that center Dean. One of those things that shouldn't be sexy but absolutely is.

His ass cheeks are resting on the bony ridges of Sam's hips. His calves are slotted in alongside Sam's thighs. And Sam is  _scorching_  inside him, under him, against him, because he never cooled down like Dean was afraid he might.

Dean pries his hands free of Sam's. He puts one on his snakes, and they wrap eagerly around him. He cups Sam's jaw with the other, feeling out a mouth that's impossibly pink in his head with his thumb. Sam's fangs have sprung free. The tips of his tongue explore the web of flesh between Dean's thumb and pointer finger, a part of Dean's body he had zero idea was an erogenous zone before now. Then Sam pulls Dean's thumb into his mouth and sucks on it. Dean dribbles precome all over Sam's stomach.

Dean digs his knees into the mattress and starts rocking. Then he's bouncing. He rides Sam, slow and kinda gentle at first, to get used to the size and make sure he's not gonna hurt himself. Then he picks it up. He's going fast and hard on top of his baby brother, sweat popping out of his pores and precome being literally milked out of him by the pressure of Sam's giant cock.

It's way too late by the time he remembers a condom. He can't imagine Sam's not clean but it's been a while since Dean swung by a clinic for a screening. Not like he can do anything about it now, though, and at this point, does it even matter?

Dean's growling. His thighs burn like his charging up a staircase after a werewolf. Sam spits Dean's thumb out so he can start yelling. One hand's on Dean's chest, playing with his nipples, and the other's on his dick, pumping away like a pro. Dean's already close when the snakes clamp down hard on his fingers and start shivering, and Sam's shooting come all the way up to what feels like the top of Dean's skull. Dean never stops moving as he paints Sam's chest. The black in his eyes fuzzes out to white. It's the first time in his life he's ever come at the same time as somebody else. That's one off the bucket list.

It was amazing sex. It was a great orgasm. Sam's letting the moan of the deeply satisfied fall out of him as his cock shrinks down through Dean's come-soaked inside, and his snakes have gone totally limp. After he's blasted his load, though, all Dean feels is numb. Empty. No post-fuck glow, no sleepiness; might as well not have come at all.

The music's stopped and everything he expected, wanted,  _needed_  to come outta this is just...missing.

Dean stares sightlessly down at the empty shape in his brain that he knows is Sam, and he thinks about Medusa, all alone, abandoned by her family, screwed over by her goddess, no matter what Sam says. He thinks about how lonely it is to never have anybody look at you and see you. How lonely it is to see only his bedroom and Lebanon and never, ever the person who always has and always will matter most to him.

Dean feels like he's lost the whole world. Lost the ability to see it and understand, at least. It's like he really is blind.

Dean knows right then, with all the painful sharpness of after-sex clarity, that he'd run the risk of turning to stone, turning into something else, to stay with Sam like this. Or just to really, actually feel like he's with him.

"You're not a monster," Dean tells Sam. He's still out of breath. Being cooped up in the bunker so long hasn't done him any favors, physical fitness-wise. "Your blood, I read...it can cure anything." He wishes they would've known that before. Could've taken some from the body of the one they killed, cured Sam while he was still nothing but bald. But would  _this_ , here, now, have happened if they had? "Death. Maybe even being turned into stone."

"Dean, no." Sam's voice is low and warning. "Don't."

"I gotta see you." Dean swallows. "I'm sorry."

He lets go of Sam's snakes. They twist tight around his hand, but he pulls it free easy enough. He starts to slide his blindfold up off his eyes with both thumbs, and Sam scrambles out from underneath him. The mattress rocks.

_"No!"_  Fuck, he's actually  _hissing_. Sam, not the snakes. And he sounds pissed, and scared. Dean can almost see his expression in his head.

Almost. Not quite.

"I need to," Dean tells him, uselessly, helplessly. "I can't explain it. It's stupid, it's so goddamn stupid, but this ain't real unless I see you, and I gotta look at you."

"No you fucking  _don't_!" Sam's absolutely terrified. For Dean, because of Dean. And that happens too often. Most of the time, Dean's got no idea how to fix it beyond some empty words, but he's got it this time.

So he reaches out with one hand. He grabs Sam's snakes, a whole handful, and he squeezes. Just hard enough to hurt, not to do any permanent damage. He hates he knows how to do that. And he hates that it feels like Perseus triumphantly hoisting Medusa's head by its snakes right after he hacked it off her violated body.

With his other hand, he keeps lifting the blindfold.

"It'll be okay," Dean says softly. "I trust you. This is what I want, believe me."

"Dean. Dean, no." Sam might be crying.

"I'm gonna take care of you like they should've taken care of Medusa." Dean makes himself keep on breathing. "It's okay. I love you."

The blindfold comes free, pops off over the crown of Dean's head, at the same second one of Sam's snakes sinks its fangs into the web between Dean's thumb and pointer finger. The poison's hot in his flesh as he opens his eyes.

Then, for the first time in months, maybe years, maybe his entire life, Dean sees his brother.


End file.
